SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY.

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXV, Issue 12257, 22 February 1937, Page 3

SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY.

Sir,—l thought my last letter w'ould hardly pass unnoticed! Let me deal particularly with Mr-Lovell’s little effort, because in it he displays to a marked degree the loose and careless habits of thought that are so prevalent amongst good Christian folk, and at which I was striking. He refers to the basic* principle of Christianity as Love—and so it is. Let us see how Socialism measures up to that. If he will tiilnk carefully for a while he will realise that the co-exiatence of Love and compulsion as motives for one act is impossible; Christ says to the rich, “Give!” arid the incentive is Love; Socialism says "Sta*d and Deliver!” and the incentive is a posse of. policemen. Christ did not tell the rich young ruler to do anything—he asked him to do it; there is a difference. Love depends on freedom, and freedom to do a thing involves, of necessity, freedom to refuse. We cannot legislate Love into man; what we can do by legislation is to give him . his natural rights,. and with them the freedom, to practise Love, if he wills it. Under Socialism the people demand as a right, the legitimate wealth of others; but that right does not exist! The supposition of that right is supported, as I said, by the supposition that wealth is the gift of God to all mankind. Mr Lovell missed the w'hole point of that because he didn’t catch on to what I meant by wealth, although I made it clear. I clearly did not include natural resources in the term “wealth,” since I asserted that God does give us those, “to all mankind and to all generations.’ Those things are, in economic parlance, “land,” which includes earth, air, sky, sea, sunlight, and rain, and other natural advantages. Neither do I include as wealth the strength and ability of men (labour); this is not given to mankind as a whole, but to each man separately. Wealth is the result of the combination of these two, and consists of goods (and services). The equality of man lies in equal right of access to the natural resources; the use made of this right is an individual matter, and the resultant produce (wealth) is rightly individual property. On a right apprehension of these things depends the future of our civilization. The reason why many are in want to-day is that this equal right of access to land is denied, at the same time true private property is not sacred from the taxgatherer. As for “A Christian” and his parade of the “fruits” of Communism, the information we get about Soviet Russia is so mixed and contradictory that we need to know where we are at before we can accept any. Which is correct, your correspondent’s story, or the others about peasants with a vocabulary of 50 words, surplus labour entrained for Siberia in cattle trucks, and armed guards to keep people from escaping from this alleged "heaven on earth”? Without certain knowledge we are in the dark, but when one apprehends natural laws the results can be deduced. “TINTAX.”